


Blessed and Cursed

by BlackJacketsandPens



Series: Ardyn Yescon Week 2k18 [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Ardyn YesCon Week, F/M, based somewhat loosely on deadlands trpg setting, listen it works, meet my oracle oc she's great and i love her and so does ardyn, old west au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 16:53:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14406390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackJacketsandPens/pseuds/BlackJacketsandPens
Summary: Ardyn Yescon Week 2018, Day 2 - "Different Genres" (Steampunk!Old West AU)Miss Stella Fleuret has a direct line to the Lord; she ain't asked much from Him, but when she is, she goes: to the ghost town of Insomnia, to find its ghost - a dead man walking, they say. Why, she don't know, but she means to find out.





	Blessed and Cursed

Young Miss Stella Fleuret was a good girl, her parents said. Her mama and daddy said so, anyway, and so did all the people at church, and all the folks in New Orleans who knew her. She was a good girl, god-fearing and devout, stuck to her mending and cooking and cleaning and prayed every night, all those things all good American girls did, the pretty blonde thing with a French daddy and a rich mama.

But Miss Stella Fleuret had a secret. Not a bad one, mind you, but a secret she knew would get her carted off to the nearest sanatorium if anyone heard about it. So she kept quiet about it -- and talked to God anyway. He talked back, after all, or an angel did. She liked this angel. He was young and handsome and had hair like a dandelion puff, and he was a right sweetheart. He spoke to her all the time, of this and that, and nudged her in the right direction to help people in need of helping.

She liked helping, from the little things like making sure they weren’t going hungry, or the bigger things like patching up scrapes and cuts and all that good stuff. Miracles, she figured they were, but didn’t call them that much. Wasn’t polite, she decided. She did these things ‘cause she wanted to, not necessarily ‘cause the Lord asked. Her angel didn’t ask much, neither, just nudged a bit. Suggested, not told.

But when the Lord did ask her for a favor, she up and did it, no questions asked.

Even if that meant leaving her safe little plantation and her safe little life, packing up and sneaking out in the middle of the night, and buying a ticket on the brand new railway line -- drilled right through a mountain! Who could believe it! -- all the way out to the west coast. Well, about halfway, anyway. Her dreams showed her a big old desert, a town once lovely gone to seed, and a gallows swinging in the breeze. She didn’t know what those things meant all separate, but she thought she’d know it when she saw it.

She did know, though, the name of the town she was after: Insomnia.

And she found Insomnia after a while, a carriage from the train station taking her out there. Built around Citadel Ranch, she’d heard from the other town nearby. Pair of brothers owned it, but what a shame what happened! Story went that the older one had caught some kinda fever, attacked his brother and killed a couple ranch hands, had to be put down. Swung on the gallows for murder, folks said. And a shame, too, he was such a nice man! Red haired charmer, smile like a sunny day.

Shame, too, ‘cause the town went bad fast after the man went. People moved out, ghost town rolled in, and no one liked going near the place now. Some said it was haunted, even. No one knows what happened to the younger brother, either. Spooky.

But Stella’s dreams told her to go there, so she did. Head held high, and hands hiking up her skirts, she strode on sturdy boots with her pretty blue dress and blonde hair all pinned up nice and functional, all the way right into Insomnia.

She passed the ranch on the way, the sign crooked and creaking jauntily in the wind -- Citadel Ranch, pretty black sign with silver letters. Faded now, and the gates were all rusty, and she didn’t see a single animal in the paddocks. Not a cow or a horse, not even a mangy old dog. Worrying, she decided, but kept marching along anyway.

The town itself was just as creaky and old, just as empty, holes in the houses and doors hanging open. Smelled like rot, she thought to herself. Sweet sickly rot, like when the graveyard flooded one year and half the city reeked of the dead bodies exposed by it. Not a sound, either, just the faint creaking of old wood and the howling of the wind, and the faintly swinging noose on the gallows in the center of town.

Scared for a moment, she stopped and took a deep breath, steading her nerves. The lord and her angel pointed her to this empty old town for a reason, and she meant to find it.

The bar sat with its doors wide open on the other side of the gallows, cracked windows like eyes and the half hanging swinging doors like dark wood teeth in a gaping mouth. _Galahad’s,_ it was, that third A nearly scraped off the sign and making it a nonsense word.

And there was music coming from inside. She blinked once, twice, and then stepped forward to listen closer. It was a piano, one of those fancy little numbers and not a grand most like, and a man’s voice, deep and on-key.

_“Well I am death, none can excel, I'll open the door to heaven or hell.”_ She thought she recognized it -- an old song she’d heard workers sing back home. _“Oh, death, someone would pray, could you wait to call me another day?”_

The voice lit something in her chest, she realized, and it was-- she _knew_. She knew why she was here. A deep breath, and she set her jaw and squared her shoulders, and then she walked into the bar.

It was a trashed mess, she noticed immediately. Tables overturned, the mirror on one wall shattered, dust and cobwebs everywhere. It looked like a huge fight had taken place here, and she could see bloodstains on the wood floor and bullet holes in just about everywhere. The bar itself seemed mostly intact, though, and the bottles were safe-- some of them were on the counter, too, various stages of empty. The room wasn’t empty, though. 

There was a man on the piano, his back to her. She knew who he was soon as she saw him, though -- his red hair was a mess, loose around his shoulders and looking like it hadn’t seen a comb in years, and the black duster he wore was tattered around the edges and dark with dirt.

Corpse grey fingers danced along the keys, though, and closer now she could hear the edges of his voice were smoothed fuzzy with drink. _“I'm Death, I come to take the soul, leave the body and leave it cold. To draw up the flesh off of the frame, dirt and worm both have a claim.”_

She took a step forward, boot hitting a fragment of a bottle and crunching it beneath her heel, and the piano stopped. She thought she saw him turn for a moment, or lift his head to look at the pieces of mirror still on the wall, and then the piano picked up again. 

_“No wealth, no land, no silver no gold-- nothing satisfies me but your soul.”_ He ended the lyrics with hands slamming the lid down on the piano and standing sharply, turning to face her in one fluid motion. “You here to satisfy me, little lady?”

He was...frightening, she realized. But not in any usual sort of way. Oh, certainly in _a_ usual way-- his face was as grey as his hands, corpse-like and thin, cheeks hollow and eyes sunken. His eyes were bright yellow, the color of gold nuggets or sunflowers, and-- he looked a living corpse. But what was frightening, really, was how sad he was. In the backs of his eyes and in the crooked slash of his smile, she could see a sadness deeper than the blackest depths of any well. And-- and seeing him, her cornflower blue eyes staring right into those gold-coin ones on his face? She knew.

“The Lord sent me here, sir,” she said politely, never tearing her eyes away from the dead man in front of her. “For you.”

He laughed, then, and it was like broken glass. “The Lord? Ain’t no Lord looking for me anymore, little miss. He had me once, and spit me right out. Bit late to come calling now, innit?”

“Probably is,” she agreed. “But I’m not here for that.” She stepped forward, eyes on him. “Name’s Stella Fleuret, though, sir, and I think I’d like your name before we keep talking. Even a dead man can still have manners.”

“Well!” His laugh was startled this time. “Name’s Ardyn, Miss Fleuret,” he said, drawing her name out with a southern drawl and clicking his tongue on the T. “Ardyn Izunia. Had a fancier name, once ‘pon a time, but I’m thinking a dead man don’t deserve to put on airs.”

“Nice to meet you, then, Mister Izunia,” Stella told him with a smile. “The Lord sent me to save you. At least, that’s how I see it, and I’m thinking I’m going to stick to that reason.”

She stepped closer, unafraid, smelling the sweet rot underneath the sharp tang of liquor, and he watched her do so. His clothes were dirty, she noted. Bright red scarf at his neck, unable to hide the rope burns, a grey shirt and dark leather vest, battered old jeans with a hole in a knee, and boots more scuff than leather. Though the pale and the deadness, the hollow cheeks and the shadows, she could see the man he’d been in life. A charmer, she’d heard, and a charmer he must have been. 

“Miss Fleuret,” he said. “You can’t save me. Lord or not, I’m already dead. Hung by the neck ‘til I kissed the dirt and saw the light, and then I got spit right back out and only your Lord knows why I wasn’t worthy, but I wasn’t, and here I am. If I wasn’t good enough for the big man upstairs or the one the other way ‘round, then what makes you think you can make a difference?”

She sighed. “I’m not an arrogant woman, Mister Izunia,” she told him. “‘I don’t say things like _I know I can save you_ , or _I’m going to make it all better_ \-- no sure things in life, my daddy taught me. But I mean to try. I heard the story of this town, and I’m not a fool, neither. You weren’t done right by, and whether or not that’s why you’re still around, maybe it doesn’t much matter. But you deserve to be done right by.”

“Can’t do much right by a corpse,” he said tiredly. “Unless you can raise the dead-- not for me, but for my friends, them that my brother murdered and pinned on me. He took my friends, see,” he lifted a hand, fingers cocked like a gun, and mimed shooting her. “Bang, bang, bang, three shots to the backs of their heads, and ‘cause we meant to tell the sheriff he was doin’ the town wrong, dirty dealin’ with the wrong folks. Three shots to my friends and pinned it on me, and then I swung and I came back.” He laughed, cutting himself off when she reached for his face, cupping it in his hands. “...I came back,” he repeated quietly. “And them who didn’t deserve to die didn’t. Where’s the Lord in all that?”

“I don’t know,” Stella confessed, stepping close enough that she could nearly touch her nose to his. “Won’t say that tired old line about mysterious ways, but-- He wasn’t there for you when you needed Him most, but I am now. I’m here, Mister Ardyn Izunia, ghost of Insomnia, and I mean to try my level best in saving you.”

“Cause the good Lord asked you nicely?” He asked her, voice near a whisper. “Doesn’t fill me with much anticipation, that.”

She smiled again. “No,” she said. “Well, yes, He asked, but I’m not doing this for Him. I chose to listen, and I chose to come all the way out here. I didn’t know why, then, but when I saw you, I did.” She stood on tiptoes then, pressing her lips to the cold ones of her dead man’s. “I knew,” she said softly. “That I was born for you, Mister Izunia. Knew it right down to my soul. So I mean to save yours-- if that satisfies you.”

He did not breathe, no, but she heard him gasp all the same, and arms came around her waist, and she saw, for a moment, something like the sun in his golden eyes. “Yes,” he whispered. “I think it does.”

**Author's Note:**

> I know this isn't one of the bullet-listed prompts, but this is what inspired me, so I...had to write it!
> 
> The setting is a bit inspired by the Deadlands TRPG setting - in particular the character 'class' Blessed (basically a cleric, kind of), and the concept of Harrowed (basically kind of undead but with demons riding around in them). It's an awesome Steampunk Alternate History Old West setting tbh, and I'll stop shilling it now lol.
> 
> Anyway, Stella is my Oracle OC! She's Ardyn's Oracle in his canon stuff, and yes I named her after the Versus Stella on purpose -- he loves her a lot, too, and I decided hey, let's write more than just constant Gildyn this week. So she gets her spotlight. :D
> 
> (listen. LISTEN. my GM had an NPC singing O Death in the rain while we rode up, played it on his tablet and everything, and the image stuck with me hard. ~~especially since the dude we fought was a fucking creepy ass rendition of a Sin Eater, dripping black ichor and everything, i was so mad~~ )


End file.
